News and events

With AWS re:Invent just around the corner, another piece of research which affirms Amazon’s top position in the cloud infrastructure biz; IHS Markit says the company secured more than a quarter of total infrastructure as a service (IaaS) revenue in the first half of 2017.

With its giant, gleaming skyscrapers and seemingly endless wealth, Dubai is often viewed as being one of the world’s most high tech cities. When it comes to digital innovation, Dubai, one of seven Emirates in the United Arab Emirates, with a population of 2.5 million, has one of the highest levels of ICT adoption in the region, both by the public and government.

An influential new recruit has joined the chorus of bitcoin skeptics. The chief investment officer of UBS, the world’s biggest wealth manager, says it’s too risky to be added to the firm’s portfolios -- and his assessment is relatively mild. Others have called it “the very definition of a bubble” and even “a fraud.”

Those stronger terms are justified, especially after the latest spell of wild price volatility. But the idea underlying bitcoin -- blockchain, or distributed-ledger technology -- could be transformative.

More than 20 announcements flowed at AWS re:Invent today, including updates on machine learning, databases and the Internet of Things (IoT) – not to mention a couple of big-name customer wins.

The theme for Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy was around builders. Unlike the previous year’s keynote, where it was about superpowers, this presentation had a slightly more mundane – and musical – approach.